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Sunday, April 24, 2016

I hope you had a great vacation. The weather was so nice, and I was able to attend a family wedding in Milwaukee, which was lots of fun.

Happy Hollow Garden

Our class got to do some planting last week in the Happy Hollow Garden. Here are a few pics!

Flat Stanley

Thank you so much for helping your child send out their Flat Stanley. Almost everyone brought in their Flat Stanley and letters and photos before vacation, and we are looking forward to sharing them this week.

In more Flat Stanley news, you may have heard that our classroom received a package all the way from California. My aunt, Miriam Hopkins, is a second grade teacher in Santa Monica, and she had each child in her class make a Flat Stanley and write a letter to a student in MY class. How cool is that? We spent Friday afternoon walking around Happy Hollow and the playground with iPads, taking photos of each student with their Flat Stanley in various places and poses. We will send Ms. Hopkins' class an Animoto of all of our photos, as well as include a few in the letters each student will write for a reply. What a fun project! Here is a sampling of our photos:

Butterflies

On Friday the 15th, our Painted Ladies finally emerged from the chrysalids, and we were thrilled to see them! However, it was only 50 degrees, so we thought we shouldn't release them. Painted Ladies live about fourteen days, so we had kind of a Sophie's Choice of keep the butterflies in the pavillions and hope they live through vacation, or set them free but know they will die in the cold. It's like the famous quote from Mary Oliver: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

A couple of the butterflies suffered an early passing, but as of this writing at 8:21PM, four are still fluttering in the pavillion on my coffee table. So I hope to have a lovely releasing ceremony tomorrow in the courtyard. Stay tuned!

Natick Earth Day Festival

I have to put in a plug for the Natick Earth Day Festival. It's this Sunday from 11-3 on the Natick Common. It's free and fun for kids, and my dad (retired Wayland teacher and major environmentalist and community activist) runs it. Hope to see you there!

Monday, April 11, 2016

Our Open House will be Monday, June 6 from 8:15-8:50. You don't want to miss it! It's important that every child has a special guest, so please make an effort to have a grandparent or someone in your place if you can't make it.

Library Day!

You and your child are invited to join me at the Morse Institute Library in Natick on Wednesday of vacation week. I will be in the Children's Room from 10:30-11:15. If you are in the area, come to the library and help your child check out some books. Reading over vacation is very important.

Thank you

Thank you so much to our fabulous field trip chaperones--Davide Eggers, Sara Langan, John Taxiarchis, and Jill Zukerman. It was a great day of learning at The Butterfly Place and certainly an experience our students will never forget. We couldn't have done it without you. More pictures to come soon! I'm having a little trouble with iPhoto.

Informative Writing

We have done a lot of research about continents, and now students are composing their informative writing pieces. We have Continent True or False, Guess My Mystery Continent, Continent Top 5, postcards, newspaper articles, and more. Excellent job, second graders!

Math

We are wrapping up our unit on three digit addition and subtraction. We are beginning an assessment this week.

Science

We represented the life cycle of the Painted Lady butterfly with life cycle models made from pasta!

Sharing

Thank you for sending in the baby pictures! We are looking forward to a fun week with lots of guessing the mystery baby!

Have a great week and a nice vacation. Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Hope to see you at the library!

Monday, April 4, 2016

Good morning!I hope you had a great weekend. Mine started off with a bang at the HH Talent Show. All of the student performers did a great job, including our own Ava! This is a wonderful event run by parent volunteers, and I highly recommend it. Maybe your child will perform in it next year!

Dress in layers. We spend sometime outside eating snack at the picnic area, but inside, the butterfly atrium is very warm for the butterflies.

Please pack a lunch for our classroom picnic. We return to school too late for our scheduled lunch time, so we must eat packed lunches in our classrooms.

Remember a pocket snack. Send a snack without nuts that can be easily transported in a jacket pocket.

Chaperones: Please arrive at school at 8:30 on Friday.

STEAM Lesson

Thank you for your support of our STEAM lesson on Thursday and Friday. The students worked in teams to build a
design to slow or prevent wind and rain from changing the shape of sand
dunes. We created replicas of a beach with sand dunes in plastic trays.
Each team then scoured the playground for materials for a design to
protect their dunes, keeping in mind the beauty of the beach and its
surroundings. We also supplied each team with some clay and craft
sticks. Every design then faced the elements- wind (some natural, some
from a blow drier) and rain and waves from a watering can. As you can
imagine, there was a great deal of excitement.